“Switching device” herein shall refer to a computing device that links other data processing devices and/or network segments. A switching device may receive a data packet from a device connected to it and then transmit the data packet to one or more recipient devices. Conventional switching devices may processes and route data packets at the physical (layer 1) and data link layer (layer 2) of the OSI reference model. A switching device may be equipped with interfaces allowing support of various networking media, e.g., Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, SONET, and/or other communication standards.